For their first-ever boat trip, Destinee Rogers and Angel Scott, both 13, took a ride Friday on a wooden skiff that they and their classmates helped to build.

The two Scarborough Middle School students declared their short rowboat ride, powered by a volunteer at a lake at Langan Park, "scary" but "exciting." They and other members of the school's Math Club studied geometry and fractions this year by building two boats in a mentoring project sponsored by the 100 Black Men of Mobile, the school system and the Wooden Boat Ministry.

"I'm going to do it again next year," said Rogers, a seventh-grader. "It gave me a lot more patience to get it right."

Friday's launch drew volunteers, members of 100 Black Men and Austal USA President Craig Perciavalle to celebrate with the students. Scarborough Principal Jason Lafitte told them, "This is something you'll take with you your whole life."

On Friday afternoons during the school year, Math Club members have gathered in a workshop in a vacant wing at Scarborough. Led by Wooden Boat Ministry founder Jonathan Stebbins, they measured, cut, nailed, glued and drilled pieces of Okoume wood, painstakingly turning the parts into two 12 1/2-foot skiffs.

"We need to install the deck beam," Stebbins, 37, told the class one Friday in April. "Here's our task: You need a helper and a measuring tape."

Stebbins, an ordained minister, showed several students how to measure 16 inches from the center point of the bow. He swung the measuring tool side to side. "Where you find where it hits the plywood, mark that with a pencil," he said. "Congratulations! You've just made an isosceles triangle."

Later, the group worked to cut a difficult angle, which didn't pan out. Stebbins delivered the news that they would have to try again.

"Really?" said Angel Scott. "But got to do it over. It's not right."

Stebbins said the first boat built by the Wooden Boat Ministry was with youth from the Boys and Girls Club in Semmes.

Building boats and building lives

At Scarborough, the project focused on math enrichment, taught according to a model used by nonprofits across the nation, including the Alexandria Seaport Foundation, a Virginia 501c3.

For Stebbins, who has worked as worship leader at Crosspoint Church on Schillinger Road, the boats are also a calling. The son of a pastor, he became interested in boat building while serving as music and youth director at First Baptist Church of Bayou La Batre a decade ago. When Stebbins left to study theology at MidAmerica Baptist Theological Seminary near Memphis, he continued the hobby.

Boat building and faith can go hand in hand, he said.

"We believe that our lives are created by God and used to glorify God," he said. "Sometimes glorifying God means using our hands building things (and) helping others. Building with their hands might be one way God uses their lives."

Ultimately, Stebbins wants the ministry to teach boat building to at-risk youth in an apprentice program headquartered in the Oakleigh Garden District. The youth ages 16 to 21 would be selected by a pastor, teacher, judge, probation officer or school official, he said.

Austal connections

At the boat launch, volunteers and members of the 100 Black Men helped to row Scarborough students in their brand-new boat and another boat constructed the previous year. Perciavalle, the Austal executive, did his part, too, rowing them in twos from shore to bridge and back to shore at the city-owned park.

Incidentally, Austal will soon be Stebbins' employer. The part-time choir director is weeks from starting a job as a ship fitter trade assistant after undergoing training this year.

Praising the students' work, Perciavalle said that the shipbuilding company is poised to launch a new ship of its own this weekend, a joint high-speed vessel measuring 338 feet - more than 20 times the size of the Scarborough skiffs. "It's timed perfectly - a couple of launches in two days," he said. "It doesn't get any better than this."

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